Hank at the Fort Lincoln Internment Camp

Fort Lincoln is now part of the campus of the United Tribes Technical College in Bismarck. But over Memorial Day, the school hosted a different kind of alumni…former prisoners and families of prisoners from when Fort Lincoln served as a War Relocation Camp during WWII. The weekend conference was open to the public, so we went over to take the afternoon tour of the old facilities.

To my surprise, very few “public” were there. To my delight, that meant we were surrounded by these alumni and family and had them mostly to ourselves.

This is Hank Naito. He’s 84 and lives in Hawaii.  When he was 18 he was taken from his home in Los Angeles and put in this North Dakota camp. He introduced himself to my 14-year-old son, and said, “Remember me in 20 years.”

I asked how it felt returning. ”Well, it’s good memories and bad,” he said.

Barracks of old internment camp, now United Tribes dorms

My son asked if Hank had his citizenship papers before he was sent to Fort Lincoln. We quickly explained that Hank was born here, didn’t require any more papers than my son did.

He walked with us, and explained that America can be a good place and a bad place. He explained why he didn’t stay angry. He told how he made a life for himself after the war, starting with a tour in the Air Force, fighting in Korea. He explained that there was more to the internment than suspicion of Japanese Americans–how certain people were especially interested in taking the farm lands the Japanese Americans had improved in the San Joaquin valley.

He told us more stories of his life, then and now, and then he said it to my son again. “Remember me in 20 years.”

I took a picture to make sure of it.

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